Current
by LetsGoKoby
Summary: The first time on the bridge, the Kyuubi broke free of the seal, if just a little. The second time on the bridge, the Nine-Tailed Fox brought something else with it. "Kakashi-sensei," she began, attempting to focus in on the blurry illusion. It was of a man, holding an orange mask, with one red eye blazing. "Who is Obito?" A different kind of time travel. Fem!Naru AU SLOW build
1. 01 Current

_Current:_

 _Defined as belonging to a present time, being in progress now or being prevalent during a distinctive time._

 _Also synonymous with circulating, running or flowing, passing from one to another. A general tendency; a steady onward movement._

It was when she let her guard down, the moment she took a breather and closed her eyes to smile.

It was the moment she thought they had finally come to an understanding. A respect. A…belonging of sorts. They were supposed to get out, survive, train together and become great together. She thought they would be friends, family. He was meant to revive his clan.

She had just been laughing and he had just been smirking.

No. He was bleeding.

She knew that blood was on her as well, speckling her face and neck like a red robin's egg. She could smell it. It clawed at her nose.

"What's with that stupid face, dobe?" he asked her, scoff breathless on his tongue. She wondered what she looked like, right then. How pathetic she must appear to him, panting and weak, fallen to the ground and useless. Crying. She realized she was crying and she couldn't stop.

A wet chuckle slopped down his chin, bright red and cheery.

No, she wanted him to slurp it back up into him, for the dribbling blood to disappear and just never exist.

She couldn't breathe.

He swayed, shoulders wilting and she could see the devil sitting there atop them and sharpening his knives, ready to take him. The rusty _'skttch_ ' of the blade transmuting to a sharp ring splitting her head, cutting clean from ear to ear like a screaming smile. He forced out a breath and another, and another, but she could see how the devil was just waiting to take him.

The blood was on his chin, the weariness was in his eyes, and the needles were in his skin.

He still stood strong.

Uchiha Sasuke was not one to kneel in front of people like Uzumaki Naruto, let alone his enemies.

Sasuke stood strong above her and she lay frozen to the ground. He moaned through his heaving chest and tumbled a little to the left before catching himself. Her hand twitched toward him, to catch him and help him because they were _teammates_ and that's what teammates _did_ , but her body refused to move.

All except her mouth, jaw cracking open in anger as Naruto demanded, "Why?!"

It was the only part of herself she could move, arms and legs ossified with her gaze bonded to the Uchiha crest on his back. Sasuke remained silent, a dark eye fluttering over her with… Sadness? Regret? _Pity?!_

Anger surged through the girl, poisonous and suffocating. She wanted to let it out, to let it burst. To scream and to charge and—!

"Why?" she whimpered.

It came out weak and quiet and nothing like she intended.

The question bounced hollowly off the ice mirrors caging them, without enough power to escape. They couldn't escape.

With an agonized grunt, Sasuke tilted his head towards her, stared her straight in the eyes, but Naruto could barely see him anymore through her—Angry? Sad? Confused? _Frustrated?_ —tears.

"I hated you," Sasuke proclaimed with a—ah, she could see that one—pained smile. A few of his own tears fell from his eyes. They were the same color of the blood flowing from his body. They were the same color as the eyes he had just awoken, one step towards his goal and ambition. Eyes that softened while focusing on her.

She wanted to hassle him, laugh till her insides burst because the mopey, proud, arrogant, _hard_ Uchiha was crying and maybe if she did then things could be _normal_ and he'd be calling her dobe and she'd be screaming at his stupid smirk. But then that devil plucked the tears from Sasuke's cheeks and tasted them on his tongue.

Naruto focused on trying to breath. Her lungs felt oh so full but empty of air and it was all she could do to just try to breath.

A senbon protruded just an inch away from his left eye, trembling as he blinked. Her fingers twitched against the phantom holding them in place once more; that needle needed to be removed. She wouldn't let it damage his clan's pride.

"I hated you all, for being happy and for having what I don't," Sasuke continued hoarsely, nothing like the biting bastard she knew, "I just—"

Naruto's airless breath skimmed her tongue in a desperate screech: "I didn't ask for your help!" Accusing. Why was she accusing him? Why… But how _could_ he…?

The devil's ringing in her ears cried louder.

Sasuke looked contemplative for a moment, head titled to the side. Naruto noticed how the hair framing his face was stuck there, glued by blood and sweat and crust. It somehow still looked ridiculously good and it that need to laugh suddenly bubbled stronger in her.

She didn't know how she could ever want to laugh. She hated that she wanted to laugh.

A few seconds between them and Saskue sighed, closing his eyes. "I don't know," the boy confessed, "My body just moved on its own…" His face scrunched as the words pried themselves from his lips as if he wanted to stop them, but couldn't; they needed to come out and he was no longer in control.

His breathing began to slow, little by little, until his shoulders and chest barely raised. Every movement was an effort, a fight all in its own against some kind of sludge pouring and filling into him so that his body had to trudge through just to _breathe_. But he kept moving, breathing, fighting as well he could while Naruto was stilled on the ground in his shadow.

Move. She needed to move! She needed to reach out to him, tear that devil off his shoulders and rip the senbon from his body, but the tremors sizzling through her body held her still when all she wanted—no _needed_ _—_ was to _move_ to him.

Naruto flinched when Sasuke coughed. His whole body quaked with exertion, blood bubbling from between his lips. Forcing out a few more words, his eyes turned to the sky. They were pondering, nostalgic as he said, "That man… My brother, I told myself I wouldn't die until I killed him…"

Naruto had to strain to hear him.

"And you won't!" Naruto shrieked, shaking her head against the inevitable in front of her, "You can't and you _won't_ die, believe it!" Red flew into her sight and for a long moment she was sure more of Sasuke's blood was drenched onto her before she realized it was her own hair, sticking to her face wet with tears. She'd never hated the color of her hair more than that moment. It was crimson. It was red. Bloody.

The way Sasuke looked at her, as her gaze was wide and terrified and her mouth trembling and chest heaving… she couldn't even keep eye contact and her words soon assimilated into the mist. Gone as if they'd never existed.

"Don't die, too, Naruto," Sasuke murmured. His eyes hardened with the last vestiges of his defiance, the same defiance that hooked into his mouth and drew it into a victorious smirk.

It looked peaceful on his face, eyes filled with retribution and fire.

She supposed that was how he was, who he was: retribution and fire.

"Win."

It wasn't a request or a statement. It was a prophecy he believed—no he _knew_ —she would fulfill.

And then he fell in Naruto's arms and she couldn't even move to catch him as his head cracked against her chest, neck twisting uncomfortably as his body slid down hers with the needles grabbing greedily at her clothes.

Naruto was more than sure the world had died there with him, in that moment, and time itself was numbed.

"Jumping without hesitation to save a precious person despite knowing it was a trap," the fake hunter nin intoned eventually, his voice layering multiple times over from his many reflections. "He is a shinobi that deserves respect," he continued, "You have my apologies."

Scrambling, Sasuke's head rolling off her knees, Naruto curled over her teammate's body and hugged the boy to her. She was shaking and trembling, finally free of the sediment holding them still only for her fingers to flutter at his neck. If she pressed down too hard at his pulse, it didn't matter. Her palms scraped by the points of senbon as they skimmed down his chest, to his arms. He was still warm and if she closed her eyes and focused, it was almost like he was still breathing with her. But the smell of iron, sticky and mocking, swallowed the illusion.

The enemy ninja melted out of the mirror, his sandals tapping solid ground before speaking again. "Is this your first death of a friend?" he asked beseechingly. He took a step forward, hesitating for a moment as he watched the two in front of him. Naruto tried to encompass her teammate, block the Uchiha from his view, but there were his legs and a dangling hand flopped on her arm.

The devil clinging to his shoulders jumped down her throat and forced itself in to her chest. He started to _scratch_.

"Shut up," Naruto whispered. Brushing through Sasuke's hair, Naruto commanded a careful hand to remove the senbon by his eye. It was trembling, but through sheer will she steadied it enough to pull the thing out. She could do that, at least, even if it was too late. She needed to protect his precious eyes: he was always grossly prideful of that stupid clan of his and their stupid eyes.

The eyes that could see the future, people had said, and remember everything they had seen. He had always told her, tauntingly, that when he got the sharingan she would have no chance in getting even close to his power.

Yet he was the one in her arms dead and she was the one left alive.

"This is the shinobi way; the truth."

The devil started to _pound_.

"Shut up!" Naruto roared, clenching her fists and eyes, tears slobbering down her cheeks. A sob fluttered past her lips without her permission. She heard her enemy take another step closer, but didn't find the heart to move. Not when Sasuke looked so peaceful in her arms.

But he's dead, she reminded herself.

Sasuke died because she was _too weak._

Naruto felt it all break within her, something give way, and she embraced the poisonous surge from behind the dam as the devil started to _scream._

Sasuke was dead because _he_ killed him.

And he was going to fucking die.

It was an explosive burst of chakra, the energy curling around her body and pulled at her shirt and pants. Naruto's crimson hair whipped around her head like a bloody crown, caught in the storm. The needles puncturing her body burst from her and the holes began to stitch themselves together with a soft hiss lost to the roar of chakra.

There was a burn settling into her eyes that dug further than tears, a cracking in her fingers as they split apart and rearranged. Her teeth, sharpening and growing longer, pierced through the lip she was biting and tore free when she shrieked leaving her mouth in tatters for barely a second before the skin sealed itself shut into a sneer.

The shinobi across from her observed the change in a still sort of silence, even as the sense of death battered his body. The girl shakily made it to her feet, arms twitching in their sockets and head raised to the mirrored sky. She took a deep, languid breath and breathed in reverence before exhaling fury. She was quiet, tranquil even, and he almost believed that she'd forgotten about him.

But he could feel her glare through the reflection, feel its penetrating stillness she forced upon him as his own body shuddered to a halt. Solemn, he waited against the urging of his instincts until Naruto's face lowered to meet him.

Her eyes were rage and spilt blood.

Senbon materialized between his fingers and were let loose as his muscles jerked to motion. Flipping back to gain distance and more weapons, the shinobi tensed when that gaze stalked him with predatory patience, the senbon flung aside by the undulating movements of Naruto's chakra and she barely twitched. He threw another barrage, hastily followed by another to cover his return to the ice mirrors when the girl's eyes narrowed.

Claws scraped the ground as Naruto grabbed him and smashed him to the pavement. The mask rattled sharply as it slammed to the ground, but it was the scream piercing through the stoic porcelain that Naruto smiled at. A primal sort of baring her teeth in dominance when she squeezed harder at his already crushed ankle. The scream gurgled off to a moan and it was a fucking symphony.

The world cloistered around them in a dissonance of light and thundering din rushing around her like a shooting star, cracking; the taste of ash on her tongue and arid winds heating her face. Air that grew denser, saturated and thick.

She could only taste his fear, hear his shuddering breath, and see his mask underneath her with absolute clarity. It was everything she had ever wanted.

His mask, his stupid mask. She wanted to smash it shatter it _destroy it_ to witness the pain splattered red across her enemy's face and the fear scorched into his eyes at the sight of her power.

The world glared brighter, blinding as if she were swimming in a crystalline prism and dyeing her periphery blues and greens while the abomination under her was orange as he writhed. All she cared to see was his damned mask ruin as the bastard _writhed_.

His finger scrabbled at her grip, long since giving up on stabbing through her hands with senbon. His free foot smashed into her ribs hard enough for her to stagger and growl, so Naruto pinned it to the ground, fingers diving into his thigh's muscle before they settled like a weary traveler nuzzling into a bed, warm within his flesh.

Another moan sloughed through her being and a wave of dark pleasure rippled up her. A shiver, biting her lip in ecstasy. Yes, she'd pluck that cursed eye from its socket and crush it, squeeze it until the goo dripped down exposing its truth—the proof!—and bleeding through her claws. She'd carve into his maimed face, trace each swirl, one by one, over and over, down to the bone.

The mask was white dipped orange and she needed to purify it crimson.

The swell of detached sound around her reverberated heavily, pounding like a drum to direct her heartbeat, deafening. With each pulse the lights got brighter, the bluster louder, brighter and louder, more and more chakra pressurizing around her and as she thrashed under the surface.

She heard his scream past the cacophony now thundering in her ears, but the mask was just in the way and needed to go.

Freeing her hands, Naruto crawled up the shinobi's body marking the ground with the red staining her hands. Her prey grasped at her collar, yanking at it and pressing against her neck with weak fingers.

The thickened markings on her cheeks pulled with her sneer. She shoved her knee into his leg wound, stilling the shinobi's hands as they dropped to the ground. The dome around them followed in collapse, a blizzard of glittering shards raining down onto the bridge's ground with the tinkling of a wind chime and the wrenching of wailed fury.

"Where's all your shit about inevitability now, bastard?" Naruto howled at him. Around her the world pulsed into obscurity even as the man's glare underneath her sharpened into focus. She punched him once, then twice and then his hands were back at her neck, both wrapping heavily around her and _pressing_ , but she couldn't feel it. Chakra began to hum in her hand, coalescing the blues and greens dancing at the edges of her vision into a sphere.

Naruto watched as his hands tightened into a vice but she laughed, a cruel parody of a thing. There was a kunai in her gut and a hand twisting it in further to the hilt, yanked out then shoved back in and again and shredding her jacket and _deeper_ but she just laughed.

"What about your _power_ to end all the misery in the world? What can you do now?" she snarled, leaning in close enough to smell his tainted stink, " _Who can you kill now?!_ "

Naruto licked at her bared teeth, cutting her tongue on her canine and blood dribbling down her chin, and he squeezed tighter, dug deeper.

The swirling globe of chakra hummed between them, slowly descending onto the pristine clay of the mask. It carved into the surface, engraving a spiral that slowly impressed deeper and deeper until it cracked in half under the power. Soon his face would split under it, too.

The chakra dissipating in her hand was Naruto's only warning.

It was too hot and too loud. The air was high-pitched and screeching, each scream lashing out and compressing the colors closer closer _closer_ until it was all _shoved inside_ her body and she couldn't hold it all and Naruto had to shut her eyes to the light but it still burned and she shrieked against the sound but was muzzled.

Everything was torn apart around her and she was choking, fumbling at her head, trying to rip open a hole to release it all as it slammed into her and was sliding through her and into her coils, blasting her tenketsu. She thrashed and tried to beat it all back but she was nothing but a flutter of wings to gale that tore through mountains so she screamed and screamed until all that came out was scarlet and viscous.

She fluttered and the wind shredded her feathers. She plummeted and was torn apart.

And just as suddenly everything was silenced.

_C_U_R_R_E_N_T_

Naruto awoke to a groan. It took her more than a few minutes to realize that the groan had come from her own mouth and that opening her eyes was, simply put, a _bad_ idea unless she wanted to vomit all over herself. Shifting on her side to a more comfortable position, another groan lit the air.

It took another couple minutes to realize that, this time, the groan _wasn't_ her.

Naruto's eyes shot open and she popped up, tripping over her own feet as the world vacillated against her eyes. Her stomach lurched at the movement and, unable to stop herself, she wretched. The bile burned at her throat as she heaved for so long that her vision become spattered with dark spots and white wisps of light. Even when she was left empty and coughing, the light-headedness stayed. The acid searing her throat lingered.

Sinking to her knees, Naruto attempted to steady herself by curling down with her forward on the ground. Bits of glass cut into her flesh, cold cold and oh so cold against her hot blood and suddenly she was heaving again, nothing but acrid breath and yellow bile splashing back up on her. She couldn't stand the smell that coiled around her, rancid and metallic.

She moaned again and the other moan answered back.

It was a struggle against herself to identify the sound's source, but she managed to stop the spinning enough to see green, brown, black. And red. So much red encircling the body just a few inches away.

The hunter nin.

Dragging a hand to her hair, Naruto found it wet; the glass digging to her palm was liquefying and making her hands a watery pink, the blush oozing down her arms. Blood and… ice. It was ice scattered across the ground and in her knees and arms and fingers and it was blood slick against her fingers. The frostiness felt amazing against her fevered skin but it melted all too soon.

Did she do that or was it—?

Sasuke. Sasuke was gone.

Naruto crawled over, chucking her jacket aside when the broken zipper couldn't hold it on her shoulders. Her palms scraped the ground and were drawn through the ice until they reached the hunter nin next to her. The rise and fall of his chest were barely perceptible but they were there, tauntingly there, while Sasuke's had stilled.

"I should kill you. He'd want me to kill you," Naruto growled, her voice crumbling as it left her lips. Everything was raw and bitter within her. Her eyes narrowed as her opponent froze, soft moans stopping.

He didn't raise a hand or turn to look at her under his broken mask. The white surface was marred by an engraved spiral and a crack nearly splitting it in half, but it held just by the chin.

"Then do it," the ninja replied. His words croaked out in a whisper, but Naruto's face was so close to his, snarling, that she could hear it with clarity. "I'm a useless tool, there is no reason for me to live," he said slowly.

Naruto reached to her thigh holster, thumb and forefinger rubbing at the flap. Slipping underneath it to the cool edge of metal.

" _I_ want to kill you," Naruto breathed out, almost in disbelief but knowing it was true. The frayed cloth at her fingers was familiar and oh so thin but her head pulsed and hurt. Her neck muscles spasmed as a dull and pounding hum. She hissed in pain and punched the ground, staring at her bloody knuckles and the melting ice turning pink.

Sakura. Sakura was going to be devastated and it would be Naruto's fault for being weak. The girl who smiled prettily and studied hard so Sasuke would acknowledge her, with long hair and a soft mind unused to the death waiting to greet her.

"Kill me," he demanded again. The shinobi's trembling hand plucked the kunai from underneath Naruto's own and pressed it to the her palm insistently. Naruto curled her fingers around it in agreement.

The boy from behind the mask continued feverishly, "I'm broken, useless to him." His neck was bared beneath her, body prostrate and yielding to Naruto's anger. She glanced to his singed sleeve and felt sick, remembering how happy she and Sasuke were when he'd landed that hit.

"I do not wish to go through the pain of being useless once again."

Naruto felt weightless but her limbs dragged her down, heavy, and the blackness in her vision returned with company. Pain flashed in her head and charred her synapses with a staccato pattern Naruto couldn't decipher—it wanted her to know, to read it and know it and _what did it want?_ —no matter how hard she tried. It slipped from her, floating away like fallen leaves in wind and as she tried to grasp it, anchor it to her, and let it tell her what to do because she _didn't know what to do_ but it snapped in her hands leaving bright red and agony.

Naruto gasped.

"I can't."

It went against all she was taught: her enemy beneath her, begging to be killed, and Naruto couldn't do it.

"I killed your friend," the voice broke from behind the mask. A firm tug, pulling Naruto's hand and weapon to his bared neck.

Naruto stared down at him, her enemy, as he pushed the blade close enough to draw blood. She found herself shaking her head in disbelief, in some sort of denial she couldn't fathom with her gut churning and screaming at her: no no _no NO!_ Something was wrong and while her body, her training, predatory instinct, told her to _do it and end it all_ , a voice soothed her and held her back.

She didn't want to kill the shinobi beneath her and Naruto couldn't understand why.

"I _can't_."

She was weak. She couldn't save Sasuke and she couldn't do this.

"I can't, Haku!" Naruto screamed, punching the mask to shatters. White tinkled to the ground around her fist.

Naruto blinked, eyes wide enough to be moons and her pupils dilating to consume the violet irises black. Hyperventilation. Her head hurt and her pulse ached and vision swung and tears pricked her eyes like righteous thorns. She felt like she was going to explode in a confetti of messy ninja bits.

It was Haku. Underneath the mask his face was slashed and bleeding from shards of porcelain. it was Haku.

His eyes were intent upon her, beseeching and resigned as he tried to move into the kunai at his throat. Even then he was smiling up at her. Naruto's hand slammed into his shoulder and pinned him to the ground without her command, the crack of skull and concrete blaring in her ears.

Because everything was abruptly silent.

There were no more sounds of kunai clashing to kunai or swords singing through the air. Haku turned in the direction of their sensei's battle with confused eyes. Naruto chanced a look that way as well, but knew she wouldn't see anything but endless mist.

It was silent.

Then suddenly, the sound of chirping pierced the quiet and grew louder and louder until it was a roar, a symphony of birds all singing their own high-pitched lament to the world. The sound was curiously familiar, as if a cloudy memory.

Entranced, Naruto's gaze was drawn to the source and her heartbeat trilled against her chest in warning and the nausea muddled her mind. Her chakra reared within her, lurching, and oh kami she was puking again as the birds jolted in her ears. It called danger, screamed for her quiet that sound at all costs.

It was just instinct, but shinobi learned to rely on such things.

Naruto found her fingers moving deftly, aching at the unfamiliar hand sign they rested in. Her head thrummed with pain as the chakra built. Without hesitation, Naruto released her built up chakra and pushed it through her coils.

She flew within a gale of wind.

She closed her eyes.

 ** _Re-write and my return. All other stories are on hiatus or up for adoption, but will not be taken down. Looking for a beta-reader who will deal with my ego and crankiness without dealing with my shit and will be willing to help me stabilize pacing and plot._**

 **I'm trying a little more Poetic writing, can you tell? It won't always be like this, but I'm really trying to immerse the writing style in the emotion of the character. Tell me if you think it worked? ^^**

 **Do not let me quit this. Thank you all and I apologize for such a cruddy chapter ending (may be revised). I'm hoping for monthly updates.**

 **Dedicated to starlineshine**

 **Fic rec: Asphodel by starlineshine – Ino-centric time!travel, worst case scenario; After a lifetime of war, of loss of madness of death, Ino is back in time to when she had everything. But that everything isn't hers; she only has her future and it's all she can do to prevent it all from happening. Only Ino is no hero, but now she has to be.**

 **Koby Out!**


	2. 02 Shinobi Rule: 25

_Shinobi Rule #25:_

 _No matter the situation, a shinobi must remove themselves from their emotions; you must make the mission your top priority and you must possess a heart that never shows tears._

Kakashi's arm thrummed with chakra and the air trilled with the electricity snapping at his skin. By the jutsu's light, he could just barely make out the form of Momochi through the mist, held down by his pack of ninken. He would have made a sly comment, something about the missing-nin's future still being death by his hand in the end, but Kakashi had more pressing concerns.

Like the ruminating disease of the Kyuubi's chakra lingering about.

There was no mistaking how the mist had grown heady with the fox's chakra, the undeniable burn as it brushed up against skin like a stray cat begging for attention. It was just as capricious, twice as malicious, and Kakashi knew that it could easily pounce on the unwary and claw at their jugular. For that reason, despite the fact that the energy no longer stormed and pulsed, it left the jounin shivering with adrenaline, nerves stilting his hands like he was a fresh meat genin at the age of six. He could still taste it on his tongue and feel it scuttle up his back, hear its purr in his head.

Naruto's own energy was blanketed by its overbearing presence the moment it snapped into being. Sasuke's had been snuffed out by its oppression as well, or so Kakashi hoped. If the fox escaped the seal, there was no telling what it could have done to the boy, though certain outcomes were much more likely than others.

Kakashi wasn't much a fan of those particular options.

And so he approached Zabuza without his lackadaisical ceremony but rather with determined intent. Aiming under Momochi's ribs—Kakashi wanted to avoid breaking through any more of those pesky bones than necessary; they tended to make his fingers sore—he would make it quick, if not a tad messy. Stinking of scorched flesh for a few hours in exchange for a dead missing nin and a finished bridge… well that was more than a fair trade. Then he could extract his team with what he hoped was minimal casualties. And if Kami felt bad for this entire ordeal, maybe she'd let the Kyuubi's seal be fully functioning after it all.

Lightning arced from Kakashi's arm as he pushed forward, the spark momentarily blinding him. He lowered his center of gravity and with one more burst of speed to gather more friction and crackling chakra, he struck.

Hands grabbed at his forearm, bubbled with singed skin. Weak hands, small hands, not enough to stop Kakashi's momentum. His fingers tore through skin then muscle then bone, stinging in their joints, and blood fanned out as a new horizon when they sliced a path back into air through flesh. Kakashi wiggled the numbed digits for good measure, grunting when they cracked satisfyingly back to place. He must have hit a rib.

Kakashi's eyes sparkled with white dots from the light of the chidori and his arm was too warm with blood, but it was done.

But one of his pack whimpered, then another and another and another and Momochi was laughing instead of _choking on his blood and something was horribly wrong_. It was a kill shot even if he nicked a rib or two—lightning tended to have the extra perk of stopping the heart's own electricity—so what had happened? Kakashi focused chakra to his eyes to clear them, free hand rubbing at them and smearing blood across his nose, a smell he ignored with practice.

The movement was jarring and a familiar grunt nipped at his ears. Young, high-pitched, and loud. His eyes snapped open with clarity.

Her eyes looked blue in the remnants of Chidori's light, blue as her father's and set in his countenance; all high cheekbones and narrow face with his sensei's analyzing blue eyes. And then they scrunched shut as the pain caught up to her.

"Naruto!" Kakashi murmured, sharingan eye involuntarily drawn to how his student—his sensei's daughter, young and brash and orange-loving, a genin on her first mission out of the village—grimaced in agony. Her hands tightened on his arm, one shifting to his wrist—he was wrist-deep in his _student_ and she was bleeding bleeding _bleeding—_ to hold him still as the lightning chakra died out. Small roses of blood bloomed at her shoulder, pooling onto his arms and slipping down to the ground between them.

"Hey Kakashi," she wheezed through a smile, "long time no see." And then she laughed at a private joke, body shivering around his arm. Kakashi didn't see what was so funny. Her _body_ was shivering around his _arm_.

Kakashi's breathing raced making his mind hazy as his fingers prickled with numbness. "N-Naruto…?" he croaked out. This was his sensei's _child_ impaled on his arm, his genin grasping for him, his teammate's blood flowing from a wound he inflicted.

"It is so great to see you," she chirped. And she was smiling at him like he was Kami herself while his arm was still inside her and he couldn't think.

Instead, his eye memorized it all against his will. The distressed scrunch of Naruto's face—or was it his sensei, dying all over again?—and the way her breath stuttered past her chuckles or how pale she was when they turned to moans. Like Rin. Rin was unspeakably pale when he killed her, too. Another ghost to haunt his dreams.

Kakashi was hyperventilating and he couldn't move and—

Naruto's voice fought against his mind's din: "Kakashi, stay still." It was ground out, but steady and authoritative and _hard._ It wasn't Naruto, but a commander and the shinobi within Kakashi, the one he was bred to be, recognized an order when given. His body tensed to stone, locked into a stillness though his mind was spinning and hazy.

—and the damned missing nin was smiling and _why would she_ jump in front of him and _how did she_ move that fast and he had stabbed her and _he had stabbed her_ and—

"This the first, Kakashi? The first time you lost a student?" Zabuza taunted. Kakashi's ninken growled through a mouthful of his flesh, biting down harder, but the missing nin only laughed louder. Kakashi's eyes flashed with steel and turned to the giant man with cool focus. The enemy nin was deceptively relaxed within his confinement, bandages hiding the smirk that grew jagged when Kakashi's eyes sharpened back to clarity.

—and he was an elite jounin. Now was not the time. In the middle of a mission with a defected Swordsman of the Mist was not the time. Kakashi held his breath and relaxed his muscles. Reset, calm down. Focus.

Momochi was still captured by his pack, and likely wouldn't stay caught much longer. He'd guess ten minutes if he pushed it, but closer to seven if he still wanted utilization of his sharingan in close quarters. Another chidori—a sharp intake and _no_ not the _time, Kakashi_ —was doable but ill-advised with the mist still sauntering around them. He would have to rely on his tracking and stay close, too close for that cleaver of a sword, and take him out. Wounds would hopefully slow Momochi down enough to make it easy, but if not Kakashi had confidence he could make it quick enough.

But Naruto came first.

He could hear her strained pants and feel her head bow over his arm. The girl was feverish to the touch with her chakra spiking and stabbing at him harmlessly. Glancing at his genin, Kakashi could only hope most of the red he saw was her scrappy mop of hair rather than blood. Aside from her current— _wound_ , it was a _wound admit it and nothing else and he needed to_ —predicament, all the blood he could see was dry and she didn't have any open injuries. That was good.

He needed to remove his arm. She would be in pain, hell she would probably scream and maybe even cry, but the Kyuubi would keep her alive. He needed to get her out of the line of fire—a kage buushin and shuushin to the client—and let the fox heal her as he engaged. Then check on Sasuke and Sakura.

"Naruto," Kakashi commanded, "I'm going to move you and it will hurt." His eyes never left the enemy behind her, but he could feel the girl tense. A soft bob of red in his periphery was what he took as acquiescence.

"How does this compare to losing your team and sensei?" the missing nin across from him sneered, bandages pulling across his jaw. The man pulled his arm against Bull's teeth, jagged red lines running almost four inches before the dog got a hold again. Kakashi scrutinized the injuries with professional aloofness.

Less than ten minutes then.

Naruto's nails bit into his arm, breaking skin. Her eyes opened into slits, a dark glare hooded and accompanied by a guttural growl. It didn't sound human, it _wasn't human_ , and Kakashi fought his better instincts to stay still in order to prevent aggravating their position.

"Don't talk to him like that," she demanded. She sounded dangerous, deadly, and nothing at all like the little genin he knew. There was a steel to her voice and power that didn't belong to her. And Kakashi wasn't sure, but her irises may have flashed red in the light. Or maybe it was the flutter of her crimson lashes that he saw through the mist.

Her grip tightened and the next thing Kakashi knew, Naruto was pulling his arm out of her with a gasp. A hewn slab of meat was missing, in the junction of her neck and shoulder, but the wound barely bled. Strikes with the chidori rarely did after the initial tearing; rather it was the smell and the feel of taking one's arm out of someone's body that was distasteful.

Naruto dealt with both devoid of a wince.

"You have no idea what you are talking about," she growled. A burst of boiling red chakra flicked behind her menacingly and Kakashi could _feel_ it sink its teeth into the marrow of his bones, prickling at his skin. Kakashi watched warily as her hand trailed to her waist only to grasp at air. She fumbled a little, patted down the band of her pants, before she froze.

Naruto's snarling face tilted down only to come back up confused to meet his, and her hand dropped. Her jaw flopped and brows scrunched in oblivious consternation, the tiny petulant whine squeaking past her lips, and it was so _Naruto_ that Kakashi wanted to feel relieved. Instead, the tail of chakra convulsed and withdrew as an oozing bubble around her injury.

It definitely was red in the girl's gaze, though it quickly receded to blue. Kakashi blinked back a wince. Her eyes were _that_ shade of blue.

Just a trick of the light.

"But being a bastard isn't the point right now, no-brows," Naruto sighed with an airy breath. Hastily, so that she almost fell to her knees, Naruto swirled on her heel to face the missing nin twice her size. Kakashi reached out his hand to drag her back and out of the man's reach, but the simmering red chakra lashed out.

Momochi looked down at her with a mocking smirk.

Kakashi needed to get her out of here.

"Narut—"

"Gato is going to betray you, ya know?" she interrupted.

Kakashi didn't need to see her face to know what she looked like: all stubborn jut of her jaw and furrowed brows deeply dug in, purple eyes flashing just like her mother's used to. A smile despite it all and despite the danger looming right there in front of her.

Her voice was drawn thin.

"He's gonna try to kill you so he doesn't have to pay," Naruto continued. She knocked her fist loosely against Momochi's chest, an almost fond gesture Kakashi realized, and it bothered him. The question of how Naruto knew this information bothered him, too, but could wait until after he _got her out of here_.

Eyeing the chakra twitching at her shoulder, he stiffened and palmed a kunai in wait.

"Even if that's true," Momochi started, baring his neck in taunt and if Kakashi lifted his arm, threw his kunai to the exposed jugular, it would be over. The red chakra twitched and curled, and so he waited. "I can kill your team, the bridge builder, and all of his weaklings and rid myself of this entire headache. See who pays then."

Kakashi growled in warning at the words, but his step forward was met with another flash from the scarlet energy. It calmed down when he stopped. Kakashi glared at the Kyuubi's chakra.

He was a jounin, he could _wait_.

"Haku is unconscious, bleeding out"—Naruto's voice was thick, strained—"and a mob of mercenaries are going to kill him when they arrive."

 _Patience._

"You need to help him and get out."

His hand clenched at the kunai when Naruto hissed, grabbing at her head. Her chakra flared violently, a brief moment before the fox's chakra covered and suppressed the outburst. Kakashi's implanted eye twitched at the sight, but he remained still.

"Haku is just a tool, I can get another—"

 _Capitalize on the perfect moment._

"You can't and you won't!" Naruto screamed.

The red chakra burst from her and flared in a cyclone, caressing her skin and cracking the air in half. For a moment, with her hair spiked in a thorny circlet with sweat and her white shirt tarnished with blood, smeared across her arms and face as the orange-red kiss of the fox smoldering just over her skin, Naruto was a crimson harbinger of fury. It was like the world broke and swallowed all sound and oxygen around her.

And then the glow was gone and she was falling.

Kakashi lurched forward to catch her, arms slipping around her waist. He felt, rather than saw, Naruto relax against his grip as he was already dashing away before the yelling started.

"No! Kakashi, wait!" she cried, kicking at his stomach and clawing at his arms and frothing at the mouth. She shoved her head against his chest, then his neck, before her scream muffled there as her arm jerked. It started to bleed over him all over again. Still, she kneed him in the thigh.

Kakashi kept running.

He didn't spare a glance backwards, even as his ninken tightened their hold on the swordsman, fierce and determined to protect Kakashi and his team, despite Zabuza no longer fighting the snare. Rather, the nin was staring after them, silent with rage.

"Damnit Zabuza! He'll do anything for you, even kill himself! Haku loves you, you bastard, and how do you repay him?" Naruto screeched hoarsely. Kakashi felt something wet on his shoulder, cold not warm. Not blood. He glanced down and Naruto's tears were somehow squeezing past eyelids she had shut tight against pain and nausea. Against the encroaching darkness and the weakness in her body. "He's not a tool for you to use and throw away, he's a person, 'ttebayo!" she gasped.

Naruto struggled weakly and sent Kakashi a glare when he sped up, irises flashing with exhausted anger. She pulled at his hair before he locked her arm to her side and she screeched again before it puttered out to pants. Her freshly healing skin was ripped open, the maw of her wound salivating blood.

Enough was enough. "Naruto, stop. You're going to die if you keep this up," Kakashi stated through grit teeth, tone smooth and dangerous.

With pain or fear or pure adrenaline, he didn't know, but at least Naruto had stopped tearing her injury and _listened_ for once. She stilled except for the rapid heaving of her chest, moist breath puffing onto his masked neck. He was almost to Sakura, Sasuke heaving beside the girl but alive, and he felt the loosened tug on his chakra as his ninken dispersed. He saw the mist clear and he saw the wave of bodies marching towards them from across the bridge, weapons in hand just as Naruto promised.

Kakashi snarled and clutched Naruto closer to his chest.

_S_H_I_N_O_B_I_R_U_L_E_2_5_

Her eyelashes fluttered apart before slamming back together. Everything was so damn _bright and sunny_ and it was wreaking havoc on her head. It was all _pound pound pound_ and _pang pang pang_ and wow that was red behind her eyes and oh Kami she felt like she was swaying back and forth. Just the slightest of movements, but her brain couldn't keep ground and slipped and fell into a nauseating puddle. Or maybe it melted into the puddle and it was her _sanity_ sliding around in it.

Oh yeah, Naruto felt like she was going to puke.

Naruto curled inward only to groan when the world above her swung. Or wait… she was the one swinging, rocking even. Her hand knocked against something loose, and clung to it. It wasn't metal, not one of her kunai, but still the solidness in her hand grounded her.

She was alive: good. But she was sick, sore and tired; she was rocking back and forth and there was a wooden oar in her hand.

Sighing and patting the boat's—because that's what she was in, the girl realized, a boat rocking sedately—side adoringly, Naruto mustered the strength to sit up.

Only to see somewhere that did not look anything like Nami no Kuni.

"Wha...?"

The mist was nowhere in sight, the bridge was nowhere in sight, and the close-cut grass of Nami's shoreline was nowhere in sight. It was all replaced with tall, waving reeds and mud. Past that, Naruto spied a city way too large to be in Nami between the shifting stalks.

Only, it wasn't quite _right_.

Naruto grew up in the city, in Konoha, and she knew how a city lived. She knew more than just its sight, but its smell and sound and taste. These building and streets just beyond her, they rose and fell against the sky and were painted in vibrancies—reds, blues, greens, and yellows that beamed at her—but they were dead. No chatter pattered to her and the smell of bread didn't swing through the air. Only the taste of salt heavy air burrowed into her tongue with none of the curling smoke or choking sewage that stalked through her own home.

Naruto knew how a city lived and the city in front of her was dead. Nothing but a garden of bones.

She blinked, scratching the back of her head and cracked fingernails dislodging flakes of dried blood.

"Weird," Naruto said, brows furrowed and eyes closed in concentration.

Wait.

Rocking? Oar? …Boat?

She was… She had…

The shinobi had fucking _thrown_ her over the side of the bridge!

"Haku, you jerk!" Naruto yelled before blanching.

Splinters shimmied into her palms and under her nails as she scrabbled to sit up—oh Kami it was all _spinning_ —and flipped to the side—ow _ow_ damn her foot for _slipping_ the _bastard_ —and heaved for what seemed like the millionth time since walking onto the bridge. After a few breaths, Naruto wiped at her mouth feeling much better.

Leaning her head against the boat's frame, she could at least be thankful for the vessel she'd woken up in. How lucky was she for landing in a boat rather than the water while unconscious? Sure, the rocking had forced the last bits of her guts to expel themselves, but it was much better than drowning.

Just because she had punched the guy—he had more than deserved it!—and refused to kill him like he asked didn't mean she deserved to be chucked off a bridge. Why should she kill him anyway? It's not like Haku had done anything to deserve—

Naruto gripped the edge of the boat so hard she heard her joints crack in dissent.

"How many times will I forget the bastard is dead," Naruto mumbled, pointedly ignoring the way her voice broke and muscles trembled. She started to laugh, but realized there was no one around to hear it so she stopped. Instead, Naruto shoved her head into the water and held it there.

Haku was her friend. He was nice to her. He cheered her on and believed in her even when everyone else looked down at her and thought she'd amount to nothing. The only people that looked at her the way he had in the forest was Iruka and the Hokage.

But he _killed_ Sasuke.

Naruto wanted to kill Haku, had him underneath her and at her mercy.

Haku saw who she was, was burned by the Kyuubi, but he smiled at her.

Naruto's lungs screamed and she pulled away from the water. It felt heavy in her hair and fell in thick drops into the river. It was a bright, unnatural blue peeking through her tresses. The surface remained mostly smooth and undisturbed even as the droplets splashed against it.

In the smallest of ripples, Naruto imagined seeing Sasuke waking up in Sakura's arms. She could make herself believe that her teammate's tears were of happiness and that Sasuke was moving, speaking, alive. They started to wearily pull out the senbon dug into her skin, the one by his eye.

For a moment, it felt real. Almost as if Naruto witnessed it happen herself and her heart beat wildly in joy because Sasuke wasn't gone and Haku hadn't killed him. It was perfect. It was true.

And then another drop fell and the illusion was gone to nothing but smooth and undisturbed blue.

Naruto released a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding. Irritated, the girl pulled at her hair and closed her eyes again. She had no idea what to do, she wanted to kill him but she knew that she didn't want Haku _dead_.

It all made her head hurt. It all made her confused and frustrated, she didn't understand her own thoughts, but there was nothing she could do about it now.

"Kakashi-sensei!" Naruto called out, unaware that she was shivering. Her orange jacket was on and there was no wind, but she was shivering. She must have drifted really far, her lazy ass sensei probably waving her off with that damned smile of his. He probably was still on the bridge, waiting for _her_ to find her way back while he read his smut.

Or buried Sasuke.

Naruto stood up and jumped to land, falling flat on her face in the mud.

But Sasuke wasn't dead.

Spitting dirt from her mouth and growling, she yelled again, "Oi, Kakashi-sensei!"

The air began to hum with the babble of birds as she pulled herself up and marched to the city, swatting at the reeds clinging to her body. The buzz followed her steps and the sound gave the buildings she walked towards some sort of feeling. Naruto just couldn't decide whether it was comforting or distressing.

So she just accepted both for now.

The sound escalated into a cry when she set foot into the metropolis, but was hushed momentarily in her ears. Tall wasn't a big enough word. Massive, gargantuan, towering, _ginormous_. Naruto had never seen buildings reaching so high into the sky that the only thing she could think to compare it to was the Hokage monument. And that was a _mountain_.

"Where am I?" Naruto exclaimed, lost to the din vibrating around her. Her neck began to hurt as it traveled up the deteriorated gray wall, tracing the bright lines of green and yellow and blue all the way up to a roof she couldn't see. A few steps back and she still couldn't see. Next to it was a fallen tower, tattered and decomposed partially into rubble, weighing down on the red maple it was built into.

With a glance back to the river—Maybe she should stay on the water? She could follow it further into the city or head the other way? But her head was already drenched and the waves were making her sick and it's not like she knew where she was going anyway—Naruto skipped underneath the bowing branches to find a graveyard of buildings knotted with trees and enshrined in vines. The architecture consumed the flora, was built around it and into it, and Naruto was scrambling across the leaves and debris like she knew the place.

At least, it felt that way. It pulled her.

A right at the yellow spire and straight past the decrepit scroll shop until she hit what was left of the bar. After that, bear left until the second road with the torii—the one with the tinkling bells—where Naruto took a hard left until the edge of the river was back in sight, encrusted with mangroves. She crawled through the roots—pure whim and nothing to do with the fact that she tried to hop from one to the other before falling—for a few minutes before resurfacing to explore the edges of the city dipping into the water where the trees parted.

And just around that was where she was now, face to face with a stone torii, painted white, standing sentinel over a road that ended up swallowed by the river. While larger than the many red torii she'd passed in the streets, it wasn't nearly as tall as the buildings scraping the sky, yet something about it was more magnificent. Grime had sunk into the crevices and oozed down in questionable lines, but the carved swirls running down the face of the hashira post were pristine.

"Oii! Anyone here?" Naruto yelled, cupping at her lips, "Kakashi-sensei!" However, her calls fell upon the hollow ears of stone and water, devouring the disturbance with eerie efficiency. Brushing a wayward crimson spike of hair from her face and adjusting her hitai-ate upon her forehead, the girl focused on the spirals. Cherry red and lined in black, the wooden medallions weren't even flaking against the sun while the monoliths surrounding it were falling to ruin.

It was vitality in the middle of carcasses.

"Ugh," Naruto murmured, eye twitching, "Why does it have to be so damn _creepy_?" Giving the hashira the stink eye, the girl realized the swirls were uncannily familiar. They itched at the back of her head and for some reason she just couldn't scratch it. She tried anyway, rubbing a hand across her neck and scrunching her nose.

"I've seen you somewhere," she murmured, circling the post with narrowed eyes. She almost expected them to speak out, but only the dulled sound of birds fluttered around her. Naruto twisted her head to the side then upside down in an attempt to see some new angle. Instead, she stumbled with a cry and had to grab onto the post in order to stop from falling down. The stone was frigid.

Finally planting her feet where she began, Naruto reached out and slapped her fingers against the wood's lacquer. She poked it, flicked it, rubbed it, before finally trying to pull it off. The carving didn't budge.

With a frown Naruto grumbled, "Why can't I remember!" before shoving her hands into her tracksuit's pockets, sulking.

Scrutinizing the gate, she peered across the river and realized that there was another set of ruins lying unreachable on the other side. But before that, rising high and jutting in the heavens, was a pillar of blue crystal in the middle of the water. She squinted at it, dull even in the light, but something about it _shone_.

But then the bird's chirping came back and it was loud, too loud, ear-splitting, and Naruto couldn't block it out even with hands over her ears. It screeched through her and crackled in her head. It swooped down and pierced her through her.

It cut through her straight and clean and _hard_.

Naruto screamed, crumpling into herself. Heat boiled at her left shoulder, forcing tears to her eyes, before it cooled to a bone-rattling thrum. There was no blood, she couldn't see any blood, but the ache was how she imagined pain if her flesh was torn apart. Her shoulder twitched and sent a lancing of pain up and then down her body causing Naruto to fall to her knees. The crying of birds softened to wispy breeze and she couldn't control how her hand clenched to a tight fist.

The girl almost laughed. She felt like laughing. And she felt relieved, staring at the dirt beneath her. She felt elated and scared and angry and nauseous all in one lead ball weighing at the bottom of her gut. And her shoulder was agony and Naruto had no idea why.

Perhaps the place was haunted or something, and spirits were attacking her for trespassing. Maybe they were even trying to possess her. Naruto laughed nervously at the idea, attempting to hide her shudders fear.

In the water: a flicker of red and silver, a trail of black. Her pain was gone.

Startling, Naruto felt as if her heart had stopped. "Kami, not ghosts, please," she whined, frantically searching the buildings around her. There was a sign, holding on with only one hinge, swinging silently, but no other movement. There wasn't a breeze, either, though.

The place was, simply put, a ghost town.

Naruto blanched and flinched as if she was physically struck.

"Hello?" she wheezed, using the torii to pull herself to her feet. The genin's head swing back and forth, across towers and piles of stone, but nothing moved. "You better not be here, somewhere," she yelled, whipping around back to the river to scream, "watching me!"

But nothing answered and nothing was there other than the crystal and the city, even when she circled the white gate three more times. She glanced again at the blue stone, at the destroyed cityscape across from her overgrown with trees, and that's when she heard it. Muffled voices pressed her ears, lingering in the shadows and crevices of the dead stone behind her. But still, nobody was behind her.

Loud, anxious laughter bubbled from her chest as she took one step back, two, and then three. She barely registered the white awning of the torii passing above her when one crumbling voice found its way to her.

 _'It's so… great to see you…'_

Naruto backed up faster, eyes darting through the city and seeing nothing.

 _'Stay still,'_ the voice commanded, and Naruto almost found herself obeying at its conviction. Instead, she tripped and landed on her back. A flash of phantom pain flared up and she cried out, grasping at her shoulder.

"I don't know what you want," Naruto yelled out, "but I'm a great ninja, 'ttebayo! I won't lose to you?!" The end of her declaration came out as a squeak rather than the roar she was hoping for. Something warm and slick had wrapped around her fingers, sliding over her knuckles like a very unwelcomed silk. She looked down and released a mutilated obscenity in surprise.

She was in the water—liquid alive in the way that it slurped at her and slithered over her—and not sinking; it was almost solid beneath her, shining a bright and pulsating cerulean that was iridescent with silver. Naruto could feel it _move_ around her, hug at her and lace around her fingers adoringly.

The white torii was resolutely watching her meters away on the bank and she was sitting in the river.

 _'Naruto, I'm going to move you and it will hurt.'_

"Kakashi-sensei?" Naruto asked. Squinting her eyes and looking to the shore, Naruto realized she could see her sensei standing there, tense and deathly still. The genin tilted her head and saw that his arm—his _arm_ , not a sword or kunai or anything, but his _entire arm_ —was through someone. She saw the blood and she smelt the burnt flesh and she heard its crackle when Kakashi backed away to watch the person fall. To watch Haku fall with Zabuza unable to catch him. It made her sick.

 _'No! Kakashi, wait!'_

Haku dead and Zabuza's agonized glare. A bloody ceremony underneath the arc of the torii.

 _"He's not a tool for you to use and throw away, he's a person!"_

Naruto wanted to cry and so she did and she didn't completely know why. She blinked and then there was a blonde man skewered on her sensei's arm and then she blinked again and there was no one.

It took longer than Naruto expected to be able to breathe again, and it was accompanied with a flutter of panic and desperation in her heart.

The water began to pull at her more insistently, dragging her hands them her wrists and forearms and one of her elbows into its depths before she could even yell. It took all of her strength to pull from its grasp, but the water was relentlessly wrapping around her like water shouldn't be able to do.

Crying out in fear, Naruto crawled desperately to the crystal—she could latch on and get out of the water there—as the glowing liquid grasped at her feet and knees. She felt one tendril slipping under her tracksuit, her tanktop growing damp and heavy from the time she fell, and no matter how many times she swiped at it the thing dragged her down down down to the surface until her cheek was kissed by its warmth.

She screamed and struggled, clawing one hand loose to yank one of her legs free. Failing, she slammed a fist to the pooling water and watched as it froze and cracked. Without thought, she punched it again and again until the cerulean turned white with fissures and it shattered. Panting, wide-eyed, she threw a heel at her other encased leg and watched as the blue miasma solidified and squelched with cracks.

"I!"

Kick.

"Will!"

Punch.

"Not!"

Slam.

"Die here!"

The pressure on her chest fell away into the river. Gasping in relief, Naruto attempted to stand, to push up on wobbling arms and numb legs, but went back down. A heavy force pushed her down, smashed her head so hard into the river that she heard it crackle beneath her. She struggled, grabbed at the weight and slammed her palms against it and dug her claws into it, but she was only pressed down further.

 _'I told you that you wouldn't stop me, Naruto.'_

With all her willpower, Naruto looked up. A man crouched in front of her, one hand pinning her in place while the other was in a half seal. It hurt to roll her eyes higher, past his chest and up his neck, but Naruto fought to see.

And what she saw was a head tilted to the side condescendingly. The man's face was covered by an orange masked and only one bloody eye sparkled through it. His voice was clear as he spoke, bright and cheerful and it made Naruto want to puke to _tear him apart_ to yell.

 _'Now be a good boy and dream pleasant dreams.'_

She roared and he lifted her and slammed her down and the world shattered.

_S_H_I_N_O_B_I_R_U_L_E_2_5_

He had left a clone behind to help Zabuza as he and his team ran. Sasuke was alive but out of commission and Naruto was badly injured, shifting in pained gasps in his arms. Sakura, at least, was unscathed, which was good since he'd likely need help treating her teammates when they got somewhere safe.

Naruto thrashed again in her sleep, whimpering or maybe crying out, and Kakashi felt the words spill from his mouth: "It's going to be okay, Naruto." They were too soft for someone like him, too panicked for where they were, too raw. He gave himself this one moment.

But then the girl froze and she was staring up at him with wide open eyes, pupils large enough to be only rimmed with violet. He felt her hand at his cheek. His body wanted to tense at the touch, but he forced himself to run.

Kakashi didn't dare look at her too long—confused, pleading gaze set in his sensei's face—but her fingers still gentle with innocence brushed across his cheekbone, feathering against his scar. They played with the drying blood—her blood, Kakashi reminded himself—cracking there, traced the scar tissue down to his mask, then up past his eyelid and onto his brow. The jounin winced. Her palm was hot, burning, and soft and free of callouses as it pressed over his sharingan insistently.

He growled in warning, ripping his head away as her hand fell limp against his shoulder again.

"Kakashi." He could barely hear her. "Sensei…" He could see the client's house just over the hill. They were almost safe, somewhere she could be treated and somewhere they could relax.

"Who is Obito?"

Naruto cried out when he tensed again.

 **Return x2 – give me feedback please; better or worse than the last one? Lot's o' changes here. I like it and I don't like it.**

 **Random poll to see your thoughts on my profile—isn't pertinent to where this will go, really, but eh *shrugs***

 **Still looking for a** _ **BETA**_ **to** ** _deal with my ego and crankiness without dealing with my shit and will be willing to help me stabilize pacing and plot. Also super thanks to AkumakoRonso and satrlineshine for dealing with my whining, too. These girls are both too amazing._**

 **Don't let me quit this.**

 **Thank you to everyone who followed and favorited with very special thanks to those you reviewed (y'all got some replies and love)!**

 **Dedicated to those who previously read Current and are giving this new one a chance! You guys da BOMB(s)! *cheesy wink and thumbs up***

 **Fic rec: Road to Heaven by crimson sun06 – Team Seven-centric, Massive AU; the legend of Team Seven, the team which appears in times of desperation, is born again with a group of defunct shinobi who just might have the potential to do something great (if they stop arguing first)**

 **Any genre/character/fandom you want me to fic rec next?**

 **Koby Out!**


	3. 03 Torrent

_Torrent:_

 _Rather than a trickle or drop, it is a cascade of water or substance, strong and fast-moving. A sudden, violent, and copious outpouring; an outburst, a barrage, an onslaught._

 _Often unstoppable._

He breathed in deep.

He didn't know how. He didn't know why… but he was back.

The others… he… he couldn't think of them. Not now. They had spoken of a possibility, a chance as infinitesimal as it was, but that was all theory.

Wasn't it?

 _Had_ they… sent him back? Shouldn't he remember if they had? Had things really gotten so bad that this was all they had?

Of course things were. Things had been worse than "bad" for a while now and all his friends and comrades, still stuck _there_ _without him_ _and he was-_

He breathed out, a shuddering gasp of a thing that hurt his lungs.

He… can't think of that. He was here and now and he was already busy. He made sure of it, even if it was a bit… messy.

There was so much blood—on his face, across his body, in his mouth—that most of what he could see was red. It wasn't the frothy light of Kurama's chakra shroud that dipped his world in the color. No, he was _covered_ in it; he could feel it slide across his skin.

So much so that his hair was dyed red.

He supposed shouldn't give it a second thought; it wasn't anything particularly new.

He breathed in and breathed out.

_T_O_R_R_E_N_T_

Naruto woke gasping for breath and when she opened her eyes, everything burned. She felt the sear in her lungs first, shuddering fire and pain. Then her eyes from the bright light and her muscles from strain and her skin from… Kami knows what. And her hands and her head and her shoulder. Oh _Kami_ her shoulder!

She hadn't realized when she moved to grip at her shoulder until the fresh blood was dripping into the crux of her elbow, sharp nails pricking into her skin. It hurt even now. It hurt more than any other hurt Naruto knew and her fingers still tingled with almost-numbness. For a moment, the red haired genin swore she could hear the vicious chirping scratching at her ears. _Scratch scratch scratch_.

She dug into her shoulder harder, biting down as her vision swayed in front of her.

 _Scratch scratch scratch._

Everything burned, but her mind was cold and numb. She could barely feel the coarse sheets twisting beneath her. She couldn't focus on the thick breeze, heavy with brackish moisture; she couldn't even try as her brain was muddled in the pain.

With an agonizing breath the room was suspended quiet.

And yet Naruto's breaths hitched and her muscles froze because it was in that quiet, that she saw… things. Her mind sharpened so fast it split her in half.

People.

"Wha-what the…"

Blue waters trying to drown her, dyeing red. Blood, desolate deserts, a crater where hundreds—no thousands, and Naruto didn't think she even _knew_ thousands of people—were smeared into its depths.

Naruto's eyes widened, then shut, but everything still played on the back of her eyelids so she opened them again wide as witness. Her heart trilled, _roared_ , pounded against the shackles of her ribs and she knew it wasn't going to stop.

A blonde-haired man, shouting and bubbling a coalescence of red and orange as he charged. A man, pale and sickly, with robes torn away and a _face on his chest, pulsing—_ Naruto could feel the tears as her body went numb—and a blob of grey-white cracking madness and rage that shifted and twisted and was so unnatural that… She saw it, heard it, felt smelt _tasted_ the blood on her dry tongue and Naruto didn't know if she was awake. Naruto couldn't tell if she was awake or still _just dreaming_ and the scream caught in her throat.

A dead, pale gaze boring straight through her as if it saw nothing and everything.

An eye hanging in the sky as if a moon.

Pain. So much pain that came from nowhere and everywhere and went as slowly as it came, pulsing within her and promising to tear her head apart.

Her throat constricted around the air within her, pushing it out, rejecting it from her lungs as a breathy gasp. Red red redredred _redREDRED_ _on her and around her and in her and_ —!

Naruto couldn't scream but she _needed_ to but she couldn't breath and she _needed_ to and then black spots began to twinkle in her sight and—

Darkness flickering in her peripherals, a taunting swirl of an almost image she couldn't make out and Naruto's jaw clenched. Red mist engulfing it, unable to clarify, clouding and making her heart scream and want to tear from her chest. Her eyes darted to the corners and shadow in an attempt to just _see_ and the world wouldn't let her. A thunder of chakra attempted to converge in her hand and she clenched a fist, hearing the sizzle of skin.

She couldn't make a sound and the sky, violent with clouds, converged on her and she was choking, crying, gasping, tingling and numbness that crawled up her mouth and she couldn't move under its pressure.

She tried not to panic; she really did.

As small puff of air snuck from her mouth, it was all that was needed. The quiet shattered against the force of Naruto's scream.

The door burst inward, the top hinge flying off useless as Kakashi appeared in the doorway. His eye flashed in the dark wildly and his fingers twitched with adrenaline, for hand signs as chakra surged through him. And so he stood there, quietly, until she too became quiet. No words of strength or comfort left his lips. Just as Naruto was choking on the darkness and air around her, so was he.

The stared at each other for a time before Kakashi blinked. His face, mask and tilted hair and sole eye. His body tense and ready to move, but his gaze stricken on her form. Naruto's mouth clacked shut and her arm dropped, drawing her sensei's gaze to the already healing wound. Her eyes shone dark purple as they watched a muscle in Kakashi's jaw jump and as they followed the slow swallow of his throat.

 _Intact_. She didn't know where the thought came from, beside it originating within herself, but it was all she could think. _Intact._ Naruto followed the lines of his throat upwards— _intact_ —to his jaw— _present_ —past his hidden mouth and nose and up to his eye. Kakashi blinked again.

Then he was gone as if he were never there at all. Maybe, Naruto thought as she blinked away shimmering swirls in her vision, he never was. She was unsure if she were awake or wading through nightmares. But she could breathe now and see the shadows around her as just that, shadows stationary and tranquil and quiet.

It was in that quiet that Naruto wondered if she had secretly begun to go crazy.

 **_T_O_R_R_E_N_T_**

 **Hey... guys... *hides***

 **You have an update, its amazingly short (I told myself I'd never write less than 3k a chapter and yet here we are) but I needed to get something out. I'm still working on this and have been working on it, but I'm having super issues with confidence in my plot/narrative choices so forgive me (I personally hate this interlude/chapter so). I'm also in graduate school (throughout the summer, too!) so I'm kinda busy? Still, no excuses.**

 **I have a quick poll on my profile. I'm still looking for a beta to get my ass in gear. Yes.**

 **Koby Out.**


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